Stay
by KissTheBoy7
Summary: Teen!crossover, modern AU. Mark Cohen and Freddie Trumper sit in an adjoined waiting room, waiting for their appointments with their respective therapists, week after week. It's only a matter of time. Mark/Freddie, definitely going to get darker as it goes along. Abuse, major character death, suicide, self harm, mental illness, the works. Written for my friend Katie. In progress.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N:** For my dear darling friend Katie (tumblr user fredericktrumper you should go send her love) as a surprise gift! It is a work in progress just like everything else I write lately -laughing/crying in the background-.

Hopefully I will actually update it now that it's posted here.

* * *

The waiting room smells like one of those Glade plug-in air fresheners gone wrong. It's so strong that it makes Mark's eyes water, one foot in the room, one hand on the door.

He can still leave, if he really wants. Just sit on the steps inside and wait out the hour, then go down and plaster on a smile and tell his mom, "It was fine, he's okay, I don't think I need to go back."

Mark is perfectly fine. It's everyone else who says he isn't.

He takes an apple-cinnamon breath and holds it, forcing himself to slip inside (he's nothing if not obedient, he hates it, he hates himself – that's why he's here, though, isn't it? damn it) and seat himself gingerly on one of the blue plush chairs. It bounces; he'd expected it to be hard, for some reason, but it's more comfortable than his desk chair at home.

The clock is horrendously loud. It ticks away the seconds and stares him down from above the doorway, as if daring him to try and escape now.

_Tick, tick, tick –_

The carpet is short and tough and dark blue. It matches the seats, almost. Not quite. It bothers him that they're not the same.

_Tick, tick –_

There is a pile of colorful blocks in the corner, in a short wooden box. There is a bookshelf, also short, with picture books on the bottom shelf and coloring books on the one above it, and a basket of crayons laying neatly on top.

Mark wishes he were a child. He needs a distraction. Coloring sounds nice – no one would probably know if he just plucked one up and settled in to meticulously shade in a smiling cat.

_Tick, tick, tick, tick –_

The plaque on the door had read "Dr. Khaleesi" and below that "Dr. Steele", but there is only one door inside. He wonders if they share an office, and then why they would. It's not practical. They'd be halving the number of patients they could see.

He thinks he remembers April mentioning something about this place. He's pretty sure she used to go here.

_Tick. Tick. Tick…_

He doesn't want to think about April.

There's sweat beading on his brow. It's mid-September. It's not really even very warm outside. It's been two months now.

_Ticktickticktick –_

Has it really been two months? "Fuck."

He says it out loud because otherwise it would all just be in his head, like everything else.

If he looks to the side of him he might see them, he might see all of them, any of them, smiling at him – worse, frowning, pleading. _Mark, why didn't you talk me out of it? Mark. You could have saved me. Mark. You're supposed to be the responsible one…_

It's not like it had been his idea.

His breath is coming short and shallow. He needs to get out of here.

He stands, reaching for the door. It opens suddenly, violently.

_Tick. Tick._

Mark freezes. The other boy glances right past him, moving to take what appears to be a well-worn, familiar seat in the corner by the blocks. He crosses his legs and steeples his fingers in his lap, staring up at the ceiling.

The door swings shut, and he can't find the courage to touch it again.

Ten minutes left. _Why do I have to be so early to everything._

He hates his mother, just like he hates everyone else.

He's not sure if he hates this boy yet. He scans him, notes everything about him, his hands itching for the old Polaroid that Roger had gotten for him for his birthday last year. The boy's hair is dark and cut short and his hands twitch and his fingers tap. He is dressed in a white t-shirt with a pocket on the front and a pair of old, pale jeans. He fidgets, his eyes roaming over the ceiling, seemingly intent on his own boredom.

Mark thinks his eyes are blue. He cranes his neck to look, just to check, just to be sure.

The clock is still ticking. He puts it gratefully to the back of his mind. He has something to focus on, an object, a subject rather.

He wishes he would have brought his camera.

(He hasn't touched his camera in weeks.)

The door opens. It is five minutes early. The man standing there is not brown-skinned, as he'd expected; he's pale and lanky and his eyes are gray as his hair and he looks right past him to the other boy, Mark's subject. "Freddie? I'm ready for you."

And miraculously, he sits up, stares him right in the eye, and responds lazily. "If I have to."

"You do."

He stands. He's taller than Mark; he's about Roger's height. His eyes are so pale blue that it's disconcerting. Mark wants to look at them a while longer, he wants to recreate them. He wants to see if he can capture that color somewhere else.

They disappear beyond the door and Mark is alone.

_Tick. Tick. Tick…._

He's never coming back. They can't make him. He can still go, he can still sit on the stairs and wait the hour, just wait it out. Might even see Freddie pass by on his way home. Maybe he could even –

"Mark Cohen?"

"Yeah. That's me…"

* * *

It had been a stupid idea in the first place. Going to the beach in the middle of the night. Breaking into Joanne's uncle's cottage. Letting _Roger_ steer.

Roger had been drinking (they'd all been drinking, all except Mark, who wouldn't on the grounds that he didn't really feel like it and everyone knew better than to push him, he was always the one to pussy out) and Mark had smiled nervously and said, maybe next time, in typical Mark fashion.

It was dark and the hum of the motor was quiet. They disappeared into the lake, all six of them.

He'd waited all night at the table, until he fell asleep, facing the window, and when he woke up they still weren't back. The lake was still, the sun was bright, the cottage was silent.

He was alone.


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N:** I SWEAR I WILL FINISH THIS I SWEAR I SWEAR.

* * *

Dr. Khaleesi isn't as odd as he'd imagined him to be. Maybe he's just seen too many movies where the shrink is really a Cool Guy with a quirky personality and something resembling ADHD, but the office is quieter than the waiting room, even, and he's hyperaware that it's a place that he's never going to see again.

He's already decided, see? He can't come back here. He's not crazy.

(He doesn't think he wants to remember it; but if he had his camera, he'd take some pictures anyways. Just in case.)

Roger would sneer at him for giving in. Roger was never fond of therapists, no matter how many April and Mimi had tried to drag him to see. He wasn't fond of having his brain picked, that was what it was; that was the sharp look he got in his eyes whenever Mark stared at him for too long, too quietly in the dark of his bedroom when they were alone and the shadows made the bruise slashing his cheekbone look not so bad.

"Tell me why you're here, Mark."

_Because I'm a chickenshit._

"My mom says I'm acting depressed."

Too much of a chickenshit to say what he's thinking. _What else is new?_

"Do you think you're acting depressed?"

_No. Yes._

"I'm fine."

"I believe you." The man smiles, lips thin and dark. The room is open and the blinds are drawn halfway, sunlight slanting across the carpet. Mark wants to kick it away from him. He doesn't deserve to have it touch him.

He doesn't _want _it to touch him, because it won't feel the same.

The doctor shifts, leaning forward. He's got a pad and a pen in his lap but he's not touching them. Mark wonders abstractly if this is supposed to be some big show of restraint on his part. Making a point. _I see you as a human being, not a test subject._

He's not going to fool Mark. _You see me as a patient. _

That's even worse.

"Mark, you mother tells me that you haven't been eating lately." He has been eating. He's already eaten a package of those peanut-butter crackers today. That's more than he'd expected to be able to keep down. "Is she right, do you think?"

"I'm not starving myself. It's okay. I'm fine."

"I believe you," Khaleesi stresses, with that same worn-denim smile, that silent "but" in the spread of his thick eyebrows. "But you can understand why she'd be concerned, can't you? It can ruin your outlook on life if you're not properly nourished."

"My outlook is fine. I'm putting in my college applications next week."

He'd never been a good liar before. Now, his voice doesn't even shake, though the rest of him is. Or it should be.

Maybe this was Roger's parting gift. Maybe Roger is his guardian angel now.

_You're fucking batshit, that's why you're here._

There are applications. Plenty of them. They're underneath his bed, gathering dust, where they've been for the past three months. He'd almost forgotten about them. He wishes he could forget the rest so easily.

"… Do I have to stay?" The long hand on the clock over the doctor's desk has barely moved two inches. Khaleesi shakes his head.

"Of course not. But I'd like it if you did."

"I want to go home."

No, he doesn't. He doesn't ever want to see his room again. Or his mother, or Cindy. Or anybody. Anything.

"If I let you go, will you come back next week?" He raises one thick eyebrow and Mark feels the thickening of tension in the air. A challenge.

He's so _tired._

"Fine."

He just can't say no to anyone. Even now.

* * *

Freddie beats him to the waiting room, 1:34 PM the next Monday. His eyes are just as pale, just as blue. They pin him to the door.

"You actually came back."

It's alarmingly calculating. The way he looks at him… Mark thinks of Roger again and immediately falls like a scarecrow from a post to sit in the chair he'd occupied the week before, nodding tersely.

"Yeah." He clears his throat, stares down at his lap and his empty hands. He'd thought of bringing his camera, but touching it would be too much. Too soon.

Everything is too soon.

"Most people don't." He understands what he's saying, just by the way he says it – the lilt in his voice, the way he cocks his head and smiles like a grimace. _Most people as bad as you. _Because the only reason he'd come back, really, was because if he hadn't he might not be sitting here across from the boy in white whose name he only knows by chance.

"You did, too," he points out, but he's too tired to be defensive. Just curious. He imagines his eyes are lenses, flexing and narrowing to the minute quirk of Freddie's lips. His fingers are twitching restlessly, his arm bent at a strange angle to rest his hand palm-up on the seat beside him. Barely grazing.

Mark would ask, but instead he preserves, watching with a detachment he's becoming eerily familiar with.

"I come every week," Freddie shrugs, his fingers flexing around an invisible hand. _Is that what he's doing? _"I have to. Gotta make sure my meds are adjusted, you know, that kind of shit."

Mark opens his mouth. _You, too? _The bottle in his backpack is rattling in the back of his mind. _Fluoxetine Hydrochloride. _

It's just Prozac in disguise. Who is he kidding?

Freddie keeps talking, though, leaning back against the wall. "I wouldn't bother, but Florence nags if I don't come. And Tolya comes with me, so it's not so bad."

He wants to ask. He wants desperately to ask. Somewhere in his chest an uncomfortable knot begins to form at the idea that there are people in the world who still have friends to count on, people they love, people they cherish, would do anything to protect.

Roger grins drunkenly from behind the glass door in his mind, sticking his tongue out, and winks before turning to disappear into the night.

"I didn't think you'd come back, or I would have brought my board," Freddie is lamenting. He never seems to stop talking. Mark wonders if he's just one of those people who always has something to say, but it seems more likely that he's just scattered.

He wants to ask _what's wrong with you? _As though it will make him feel better to know. As if he's hoping to God there's just one other person in the world who can understand.

"Tolya says you're not listening." He's staring at him again, eyes pale and accusing. For the first time in months Mark feels guilt that doesn't crush his soul on impact, like dead nerve endings awakening, clumsy and stumbling like the words from his mouth.

"I'm s-sorry." He hasn't stuttered like this in years. Collins would be ruffling his hair now, guffawing, pulling him into a noogie. "I was just –"

The door opens and Freddie is standing before Mark can even try to finish his sentence, turning to look down his nose at him. It's ridiculous and a little condescending. "Just remember to come back next week."

It was a demand, not a request. Mark feels himself bristle, trembling submissively.

He still can't say no.


End file.
